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The Web has become a giant swirling stew of stories and messages, with more and more content added to the mess at any given moment. Writing for the Web can be challenging, exciting, and funyet daunting. How can you make sure that your web content gets noticed and is well received? Here are 10 tips to help you get the best results.

Tip 1: Write for a Specific Audience

Understanding your audience is the most important consideration for any web writing project. Only when you have a clear picture of your target audience can you make your content clear, meaningful, and interesting to your readers. Don't fall into the trap of trying to write for everybody. The more you understand about your readers, the better you'll be able to grab their attention and make them feel comfortable. You'll use terms that are familiar to them and they're likely to use for searching. For example, a seven-year-old who takes a spill on her bicycle will talk about her injuries as cuts, scrapes, and bruises; a physician might discuss such wounds as lacerations, abrasions, and contusions or hematomas.

Get to Know Your Audience

Once you've determined, in general, who your audience is, you'll need to get to know that audience even better. When you write about topics that are near and dear to your heart, most likely you're writing for friends, family, and colleagues, so you already know much about who your readers are and what topics they'll like. Here are a few suggestions for ways to gain an even better understanding of your audience:

After you've gathered all the information you need about your audience, you can easily create the persona to help you stay on track and write to a specific type of person. You just need to create a short bio for that hypothetical person. You can use Figure
1 as a template to design your persona. Then use your persona to help judge whether your web content appeals to your target audience.